This American Life - Radio Archive

This American Life spends several days in a mall in suburban Tennessee, not only to find out what people are buying in this grim financial year, but to document daily life in the mall during the run-up to Christmas. Also, a rift in a national association of professional Santas—the Amalgamated Order of Real Bearded Santas (yes, there is such a group).

Stories of people who ruin things for everyone else...or who are accused of that. Like the San Diego parents who didn't vaccinate their child for measles (pictured at left: measles virus). When their seven-year-old caught the disease on an overseas trip, this decision became a whole community's problem. The outbreak infected 11 children and endangered many others. Also: Comedian Mike Birbiglia singlehandedly ruins a big charity event, and the disquieting truth about Amtrak’s Quiet Car.

Mike Birbiglia's story is excerpted from his CD, My Secret Public Journal. He also wrote and appears in the one-man show Sleepwalk With Me.

Instead of the regular "each week we choose a theme, and bring you three or four stories on that theme" business, this week we throw all that away and bring you twenty stories—yes, twenty—in sixty minutes. Inspiration for this week's show came from the Neo-Futurists, whose long-running Chicago show Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind promises 30 Plays in 60 Minutes every single weekend.

Carlton Pearson's church, Higher Dimensions, was once one of the biggest in the city, drawing crowds of 5,000 people every Sunday. But several years ago, scandal engulfed the reverend. He didn't have an affair. He didn't embezzle lots of money. His sin was something that to a lot of people is far worse: He stopped believing in Hell.

A man in Pakistan wants to break his friend out of prison. He buys him an amulet that supposedly has the power to protect anyone from harm. But just to be on the safe side, he decides to test the amulet by trying it out first. On a chicken. Stories about the powerful combination of chickens, faith and God in our not-quite-annual 2008 Poultry Slam.

What's frustrating about music lessons, what's miraculous about them, and what they actually teach us. This show was recorded in front of a live audience at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, with help from KQED-FM, during the '98 Public Radio Conference in San Francisco.

A 79-year-old woman, Mary Ann, dies in Los Angeles. She's lived alone for decades. No one knows her—or her next of kin. There's a body to be buried, a house full of stuff to get rid of. It so happens there's a county bureaucracy for just this type of problem. In this show, we follow around the person charged with figuring out what to do with the remains of Mary Ann's life. This and other stories about what happens when people are left alone.

This week we bring you stories of privilege and the lengths some will go to to maintain it. In one story, a woman fights—on tape!—with her city's parking enforcer about playing favorites. And in honor of the late Studs Terkel, we bring you a special collection of stories from his Hard Times radio series; the haves and the have-nots talk about life during The Great Depression.

For Halloween, scary stories that are all true. Kidnappings, zombie raccoons, haunted houses—real haunted houses!—and things that go "EEEEK!!!" in the night. Plus, a new story by David Sedaris, in which he walks among the dead.

This American Life goes to Pennsylvania, a battleground within a battleground, to figure out why, and how, John McCain and Barack Obama both think they can win there. And we get to know the ordinary people who’ve become the candidates’ most forceful foot soldiers.

The online versions of this episode contain a slighter expanded version of Sarah Koenig's story about Obama volunteers registering students to vote, and an entire extra act at the end of the show. This last act couldn't fit into the broadcast version of the show because of time considerations. It's an aircheck from Steve Corbett's talk radio show at WILK-FM, in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre/Hazleton.

Pictured: Sonya Naugle, a Sarah Palin look-alike. Host Ira Glass interviewed Sonya at the Republican National Convention—you can listen to that interview here.

Stories of people climbing to be number one. How do they do it? What is the fundamental difference between us and them?

Paul Feig is the recent author of the children's book, Ignatius MacFarland: Frequenaut!.

Stories about people trying to find new solutions to age-old problems—solutions that sometimes cause problems of their own. Alex Blumberg returns (in collaboration with the Planet Money podcast) with the latest in the financial crisis.

You can listen to the 2006 version of this episode, with two additional stories, here.

Looking for more on the financial crisis? Check out the Planet Money blog for daily updates.

Alex Blumberg and NPR's Adam Davidson—the two guys who reported our Giant Pool of Money episode—are back, in collaboration with the Planet Money podcast. They'll explain what happened this week, including what regulators could've done to prevent this financial crisis from happening in the first place. You can learn more about the daily ins and outs and join the discussion on the Planet Money blog.

Stories about people who take grand, sweeping approaches to solving problems of all sorts. Paul Tough reports on the most ambitious and hopeful solution to urban poverty in the country; his book about this is Whatever It Takes. If you want to donate to the Harlem Children's Zone, visit their website. The musician in Act Two of our show is David Berkeley.

Erin Einhorn grew up begging her mother to tell her all about the remarkable story of how she survived World War Two, thanks to a Polish woman named Honorata Skowronski, who risked her life. But her mother didn't like to talk about it. And somehow, her family didn't consider Honorata a hero. So Erin went to Poland, hoping to find the Skowronski family and reintroduce them to her mom, and figure out what happened. Erin elaborates on this story in her book, The Pages In Between.

Three guys who go by the names Professor So and So, Jojobean and YeaWhatever spend part of each day running elaborate cons on Internet scammers. They consider themselves enforcers of justice, even after they send a man 1400 miles from home, to the least safe place they can bait him: the border of Darfur. (The full, amazing account of what they did is here, with photos and maps and phone recordings.) A show about enforcers: who steps up to be sheriff, who doesn't and why, and what happens when the head of a government body doesn't like to enforce any rules at all.

We all have that thing in us: a voice telling us to do or think something we shouldn't. In this episode, stories of people trying to exorcize that voice. An Iraq War veteran comes home with an aversion to all Muslims and decides to systematically defeat his own bigotry. And a fundamentalist Christian takes on an actual demon who happens to visit his college classroom.

Stories of people trying to get rich quick, or otherwise make something for nothing. As everyone knows, there's no such thing as something for nothing. You always pay a price.

Shalom Auslander goes on vacation with his family, and suspects the beloved, chatty old man in the room next door is an imposter—and sets out to prove it. This and other stories about the pitfalls of making snap judgments about others.

The adoption agency used by the birth mother in this week's show is called Open Adoption & Family Services. It's a non-profit with offices in Oregon and Washington, but their services are available nationwide. To learn more about them, go to: www.openadopt.org.

The world is not divided into two types of people—unless you've just been through a horrible break-up, in which case it's divided between people who understand and people who don't. Stories of people trying to comprehend their own break-ups and those of others, including writer Starlee Kine on what makes the perfect post-break-up song.

Mike Birbiglia got used to strange things happening to him when he slept—until something happened that almost killed him. Mike's story and other reasons to fear sleep, including roaches, bedbugs, "The Shining," and mild-mannered husbands who turn into maniacs while asleep.

Mike Birbiglia's story was recorded at The Moth, and was recently part of a one-man show called "Sleepwalk with Me." Mike's tourdates are here, his album Two Drink Mike is here, and his album My Secret Public Journal (Live) is here.

Attention listeners. In the Internet version of Act One of this show, we have left one curse word un-bleeped at a critical moment.

An 18-year-old in foster care—Anthony Pico, pictured with San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom—gives speeches to the big and powerful all over California. Public speaking changed his life. But being a spokeskid, he's found, is complicated. And when David Iserson was a teenager, he starred in this commercial (Quicktime, 2.4 MB), which basically ruined his life. Plus, other stories of what happens when you go from private person to public face.

On a summer day in 1951, two baby girls were born in a hospital in small-town Wisconsin. The infants were accidentally switched, and went home with the wrong families. One of the mothers realized the mistake but chose to keep quiet. Until the day, more than 40 years later, when she decided to tell both daughters what happened. How the truth changed two families' lives—and how it didn't.

When John came back from Iraq, he refused to leave his house. He was paranoid. He had violent nightmares—the same ones every night. He was haunted by the killing he'd done. Unlike a lot of vets, John got treatment. The people at the Veterans Affairs clinic started to feel optimistic about his case. And then John attacked his fiancée and her mother. This and other stories of people who've come face to face with death and are struggling to move on.

Bob Berenz had a good job as an electrician. But he wanted to do something bigger. He came up with an idea for an invention. But as he studied physics texts to see if his invention could work, he happened upon the biggest idea of his life: a revelation about physics that would disprove Einstein, and Newton. That is...if Bob's right. This, and other stories about the pitfalls of knowing just a little bit too little.

Robert (pictured) had a bad reputation as a kid who didn't do his schoolwork and had little respect for adults. But his best friend, Lilly (holding picture), thought he was misunderstood. After Robert died, Lilly decided to step in and do for him what he could never do for himself: tell people how great he was. This and other stories of what happens when one person becomes a proxy for another, either by choice or by accident—including one by Davy Rothbart about the time he made a life-changing decision that wasn't really his to make.

Governments are always looking for ways to change behavior—stopping people from driving drunk, or encouraging them to recycle. This week, we have stories of social engineering on a smaller scale. In one story, a man convinces his friend to try something new, turn his back on a good paying salary and an apartment...and become homeless.

Josh's mother and younger brother (pictured) were a mess. His mother drank too much. His brother got arrested a lot. And they'd somehow ended up living in a retirement community in South Florida, even though his brother was 23. Josh hadn't lived with them since he was nine, and they didn't play much of a role in his daily life—until they took over his life. Duty calls.

Does the truth always come out? Of course not! Though sometimes it comes out in the most uncomfortable ways imaginable. Stories of concealed truths bubbling to the surface, including a brand-new, unpublished story by fiction writer and filmmaker Etgar Keret.

Sure, you know the big ones: don't murder, steal...something about graven images? We help you with the others through stories and interviews, each dealing with a different commandment. Military chaplains discuss "Thou Shalt Not Kill." Middle school students explain what they've been coveting. Plus, adultery, lying, and more. (Image courtesy of The Brick Testament.)

A lawyer in the Justice Department gets the professional opportunity of a lifetime: to be the lead prosecutor in one of the first high-profile terrorist cases since 9/11. But things go badly for him. His convictions get overturned, he loses his job, and he ends up on trial himself, in federal court. His accusers? His former colleagues at the Justice department.

While the seniors danced at Prom Night 2001 in Hoisington, Kansas—a town of about 3,000—a tornado hit the town, destroying about a third of it. When they emerged from the dance, they discovered what had happened, and in the weeks that followed, they tried to explain to themselves why the tornado hit where it did. Plus other stories that happen on Prom Night.

Haider was a teenager living in Iraq when the war broke out. All of a sudden, the whole world was watching what was happening in his country. And he decided to do one of the least safe things possible: work for foreign media covering the war. Plus, other stories of what happens when you strike out into the world.

A special program about the housing crisis produced in a special collaboration with NPR News. We explain it all to you. What does the housing crisis have to do with the turmoil on Wall Street? Why did banks make half-million dollar loans to people without jobs or income? And why is everyone talking so much about the 1930s? It all comes back to the Giant Pool of Money.

A shorter companion version of this story appeared on NPR's All Things Considered.

A show assembled from our 2007 live tour. Sarah Vowell, David Rakoff, and Dan Savage went on the road with us and performed brand-new stories in front of sold-out audiences. Stories about what TV can teach us...and how TV lies to us. With music by Mates of State.

A family wishes for years that they could do something to stop their neighbor's shocking behavior. Suddenly they get the power to decisively change things forever...and they have to decide whether they will. This, and other stories of everyday people who get saddled with great power—and the great sense of responsibility that goes with it.

It's the late 1960s, and in the new technology of cryonics, a California TV repairman named Bob sees an opportunity to help people cheat death. But freezing dead people so scientists can reanimate them in the future is a lot harder than it sounds. Harder still was admitting to the family members of people Bob had frozen that he'd screwed up. Badly.

Stories of people leaving the situation they're used to and striking off for something less familiar. Including the secret history of Jerry Springer: before he was the king of trash TV, he was an inspiring and talented politician. Plus, a group of nuns leaves the Catholic Church...only to find themselves essentially remaining nuns.

Three stories that consider the question: does anyone's family ever change? A woman travels to Alaska to spend some time with her brother, hoping he might change a little. What can happen when a sibling relationship doesn't ever change—over decades. And what if there's literally nothing that can be done to change your dad?

We've noticed a trend in a number of actions taken lately by the United States government. Tiny things, things you probably haven't heard of, but with big implications. Harassing widows. Defying a century-old and utterly benign treaty—with Canada! So we've decided to spend an hour talking about the unrelenting, combative style of this Administration. And yes—the always-illuminating Jack Hitt will do some of this talking.

A man makes his living convincing lottery winners to sign their jackpots over to him—and discovers why the vast majority of them wish they'd never won. Plus, Sarah Vowell on the downside of the dream job and John Hodgman on what happens when celebrity hunts you down and finds you...on your living room couch, pushing 40, and a couple sizes larger than you want to be.

In 1912 a four year-old boy named Bobby Dunbar went missing in a swamp in Louisiana. Eight months later, he was found in the hands of a wandering handyman in Mississippi. (The picture at left was taken just days later.) In 2004, his granddaughter discovered a secret beneath the legend of her grandfather's kidnapping, a secret whose revelation would divide her own family, bring redemption to another, and become the answer to a third family's century-old prayer. We devote our entire episode to the story.

Seventh-grader Kayla Hernandez likes to reminisce about when she was a child, back in fifth grade. She visits her school, where her fifth grade class met, and looks at her old books, thinks about what happened there. She says she knows that decades from now, she won't even remember most of what's happening to her this year, in seventh grade, and that makes her sad. This and other stories of people who try to revisit their childhoods: what they find...and what they do not find.

The true story of little-known rooms in the New York City Board of Education building. Teachers are told to report there instead of their classrooms. No reason is usually given. When they arrive, they find they've been put on some kind of probationary status, and they must report every day until the matter is cleared up. Plus other stories of the uneasy interaction between humans and their institutions.

Stories of people getting more testosterone and coming to regret it. And of people losing it and coming to appreciate life without it. The pros and cons of the hormone of desire.

Veronica Chater's mother wants to go to a resort in Mexico with a friend. Her father, a former cop with an extravagant sense of security, prepares as if she's headed for a war zone. This, and other stories about couples, that happen decades after the moment their eyes meet.

This week we bring you a story originally slotted for last week: backstage with comedy writers at The Onion. They start with over 600 potential headlines for their fake-news newspaper each week, and over the course of two days, in the very tough room that is their editorial conference room, they select 16 to go in the paper. Plus other people speaking their minds in very tough rooms.

A man with social anxiety goes through a transformation on a TV game show, a young woman with high ideals has them dashed by a TV game show, and teams compete to solve some of the hardest puzzles in the world, for fun. The secret life of quiz shows, the life behind the questions and answers.

An American reporter in Iraq decides to rent a house in a residential Baghdad neighborhood rather than live in a hotel and be an easy target for insurgents. And an eleven-year-old boy figures out an ingenious way to see his dead father again. Big ideas gone amok.

Sabir, a young man in Afghanistan, thought he'd found true love but he couldn't afford a wedding. So two foreign aid workers, friends of his, decide to come to his rescue. They soon find out making a lasting love match isn't as simple as writing a check. This and other stories of people matching others up—with wives, with toys, with body parts.

In 1980's New York City, rent is rising: it seems out of control, and residents struggle to keep up. So Jack Hitt help organize tenants, and threatens a rent strike. This does not go over so well with his building super, who, as it turns out, is a very dangerous man. This and other stories of the mysterious hold supers have on their buildings, or their buildings have on them.

A Muslim woman persuades her husband that their family would be happier if they left the West Bank and moved to America. They do, and things are good...until September 11. After that, the elementary school their daughter goes to begins using a textbook that says Muslims want to kill Christians. This and other stories of what happens when Muslims and non-Muslims try to communicate, and misfire.